Obama vs. Netanyahu: What's behind the latest U.S.-Israel tension

By Noah Pollak

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS|

Sep 12, 2012 | 7:12 PM

(EPA/Mark Wilson/pool)

In February of this year, days before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived for a visit to the United States that would be filled with difficult talks about Iran, a high-ranking Israeli security official named Amos Yadlin predicted in an op-ed why Israel and the United States may end up in conflict over the Iranian nuclear program.

America's vast military capabilities, he wrote, "give America more time than Israel in determining when the moment of decision [for military action] has finally been reached. And as that moment draws closer, differing timetables are becoming a source of tension."

Advertisement

His words were prophetic; the tension has arrived. The Obama administration wants Israel to stand down and trust the President's pledge that he will not allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons. In exchange for that trust, the Israelis have been asking Obama for months to make an explicit and ironclad guarantee that American military strikes will be forthcoming should the administration's preferred strategy of diplomacy and sanctions fail to stop Iran's nuclear program.

In order for the Israelis to place their security - indeed, what could be their very existence - in Obama's hands, they want red lines: guarantees from Obama that military action will be triggered should Iran cross specific thresholds in uranium enrichment and weapons development.

Yet the Obama administration refuses to give them. And so the conflict escalated dramatically this week, as Israeli frustration with Obama went public. Netanyahu said on Sunday that "the sooner we establish [red lines], the greater the chances that there won't be a need for other types of action," i.e. military action.

This drew a blunt response from Secretary of State Clinton, who replied the same day that "we're not setting deadlines." Then White House spokesman Jay Carney reiterated the point on Monday: "It is not fruitful as part of this process to engage in that kind of specificity."

This provoked an even harsher response from Netanyahu. "The world tells Israel 'wait, there's still time'. And I say, 'Wait for what? Wait until when?'," he said in English at a press conference. "If Iran knows that there is no deadline, what will it do? Exactly what it's doing. It's continuing, without any interference, towards obtaining nuclear weapons capability and from there, nuclear bombs."

The feeling of mistrust is obviously mutual. According to news reports, Netanyahu asked to meet with Obama when he travels to the U.S. for the UN General Assembly later this month - and the Obama administration couldn't accommodate that request, likely attempting to avoid a highly public confrontation with the Israeli leader and a reminder to Americans that his Iran policy is failing just weeks before election day.

Even Obama's pledge that he will not allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons comes up short for Israel, as it would still allow the Iranian nuclear program to develop the "breakout" capacity necessary to race to a deliverable bomb on short notice.

Obama officials say their intelligence is so precise that they could catch the Iranians trying to break out - but the Israelis, for whom the stakes are far higher, are less sanguine.

For Obama, there is a great irony to the situation in which he finds himself. In order to prevent an Israeli attack, he is asking Netanyahu to trust him. Yet Obama spent the first few years of his presidency eroding the trust between himself and the Israeli leader - pressuring, criticizing, and blaming him, even telling Jewish leaders that he sought to put "daylight" between the U.S. and Israel. If Obama is a reflective man, he must wish today that he had been kinder to Netanyahu yesterday.

Pollak (@noahpollak) is executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel.